Melbourne playwright Ray Lawler dies aged 103

Melbourne playwright Ray Lawler, whose landmark play, Summer of the 17th Doll, changed the direction of Australian theatre, has died.

Playwright Ray Lawler at 94.

Melbourne playwright Ray Lawler, whose landmark play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, changed the direction of Australian theatre, has died aged 103.

His famous play is set in the then working class suburb of Carlton in 1953 and revolves around an annual trip down south by two robust sugarcane cutters and the women with whom they spend the summer. The characters were working-class Australians speaking in the vernacular that was familiar to us all but which rarely made the stage.

It was an immediate success, first being performed in Melbourne, quickly moving to Sydney and then on to London, the first Australian play to be performed internationally. Lawler played one of the shearers, Barney Ibbot, here and in London, where later billionaire cardboard king Richard Pratt played another of the roles in London and America.

But its New York season was short: the cultural gulf was too wide and it lasted just five weeks. Critics were not so much disappointed in it, as mystified.

Nonetheless, an Americanised version of it was soon filmed there starring Ernest Borgnine, John Mills (playing Lawler’s role as Barney) and later Murder, She Wrote star Angela Lansbury.

Poster for the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust and the Arts Council of Australia Production of Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

Lawlor was born to working class parents in Footscray, an inner west Melbourne suburb on May 21,1921. There were eight children and, in a then not uncommon move, he went to work as a labourer in a local factory aged 13. He stayed there more than a decade.

But, bright and ambitious, he studied acting and by 1946 had written a play that was warmly received. Six years later he wrote another, Cradle of Thunder, which was again well received.

Then, nine years later, came Summer of the Seventeenth Doll which won first prize in a now forgotten local competition, and was enthusiastically acclaimed.

His famous play has since been translated into many languages and performed across the world and is regarded as one of the landmark pieces of writing of the 20th century. It was adapted for British television in 1964 and for Australian screens in 1979.

It has been performed locally and around the world ever since.

Lawler lived in Europe for years, but was enticed back to Australia to fill the role as associate director of the Melbourne Theatre Company, as long as he stretched Doll out to a trilogy, which he did.

The first play, Kid Stakes, set before Doll, had a character who often used a phrase common in Port and South Melbourne 50 years earlier: “Up there, Cazaly”. It was a motivational saying referring to local AFL hero Roy Cazaly. Singer Mike Brady attended an early showing and went home with the idea for song.

Lawler died in Melbourne on July 24.